Abstract

The anchorage provided by the adventitious roots of cereal crops is essential to
keep the plant upright and prevent
toppling over, known as lodging. Plant anchorage
depends on adventitious root development and the physical conditions of the
surrounding soil. The research aims to determine the effect of soil conditions on
anchorage and yield of wheat. This entailed inves
tigating the effect of soil physical
conditions, namely, bulk density, moisture content and cultivation systems on the
plant properties associated with lodging incidence, focusing primarily on
adventitious root development, anchorage moment and the grain y
ield of winter
wheat. The effect of bulk density (treatments 1.1, 1.3 and 1.5 Mg m
-
3
) in sandy loam
and clay loam soil on the anchorage moment of wheat plants grown in pots was
significant in both soil types: the plant anchorage moment increased by 40% and
3% with increasing soil bulk density from 1.1 to 1.3 and 1.5 Mg m
-
3
, respectively.
The adventitious root development and plant anchorage moment was significantly
influenced by cultivation systems: under control traffic condition, zero tillage resulted
in
increased values of the soil physical and adventitious root properties.
Consequently, plant anchorage moment increased by 9% and 32% compared to
shallow and deep tillage systems, respectively. Nevertheless, the results indicated 35% reduction in the yield
due to the tramline effects in zero tillage system compared
to shallow and deep tillage systems. Under non
-
controlled traffic condition, however,
the results of determining four tillage treatments showed no effect on the soil
physical conditions, adventiti
ous root development and plant anchorage moment
Furthermore, wheat plants subjected to the reduced moisture content of 50%
-
65%
of field capacity before flag leaf emergence were estimated to be 25% more likely
to root lodge compared to plants grown at 85
%
-
100% moisture content of field
capacity.